


20 Stitches

by cherrycolouredfunk



Category: Supercat - Fandom, Supergirl, Supergirl (Comics), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-18 06:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5901106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherrycolouredfunk/pseuds/cherrycolouredfunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kara is rushed to the hospital after an incident in National City. Since Hank and Alex are out of town for the day, it is up to Cat to make sure she comes through her injury--alive. Obviously, Kara has expended her powers and is rendered, well, powerless. Supercat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	20 Stitches

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note: Ok, so this is a prompt I received from superkats on tumblr. I really, really liked the idea for it because it was angsty and cute all at once. The title is based on the song “Out of the Woods” by Taylor Swift, as per their headcanon. I think my own song contribution will be “Broken Bones” by GLASS. Go listen!
> 
> Setting: Kara tries to save the day in National City, but she gets direly injured. Alex and Hank are away on a mission far away for the day, and can’t help Kara at the moment, so she had no choice but to go to the hospital.
> 
> *edited since posting for continuity errors*

The bright lights threw her head into a dazed frenzy.

Blood was pounding, waves and waves splashing in her temples.

Fear was stronger than ever, heart-thumping so hard that she was absolutely certain the damn thing would come to a halt. 

This was a place that Cat never wanted to be again—and it was a place she had done everything in her power to avoid for the last thirteen years or so. 

She had been handed a god-sent circumstance that left her with absolutely no choice. 

The hallways bunched up in her vision and melded together. One by one, they came and past, the sickly yellow color of the walls, the white tiled floors, the never-ending maze that made it impossible to have a conscious idea about where she was headed. 

She had become so concerned with finding her way to the proper room, that she had forgot to notice and relish in the aspects of her existence that she usually would; doctors and nurses glancing her way, faces glassed over in a stunned expression to see The Queen of All Media walking down their halls. 

What may have been more disconcerting was her own ashen expression, heals clanking noisily, unevenly, hair disheveled, hands wringing unstoppably, hazel eyes stuck straight forward. She believed that she had even stumbled once or twice on carts and even other people’s feet in her journey through the hellish place.

She could have slapped herself for caring so much about a young, simple creature such as Kara Danvers. Whatever possessed the poor girl to keep running out and getting almost killed baffled the older, wiser woman. She so sorely wished she could have been there to save her from her imminent misery, or at least shake the girl silly. 

Still, she could not stop herself. Once she received the miserable call from Lucy that Kara had been direly injured while trying to help prevent a local tragedy, she was already on her private elevator and on the way down to her car, driver being at once notified of any change in her schedule.

Finally she arrived in the correct room, after being given clues in the blood-curdling screams in the voice of her assistant. She burst into the room, ready for any action that could possibly be needed, only to see Lucy, James, and Winn arching their bodies over the writhing figure. They all looked up at her, their panic-stricken glances accentuated by the dark circles painted under their eyelids. Cat stepped into power-mode and shut them all down before they had a chance to utter one sentence.

“Miss Grant-“ Lucy began, but Cat held up her hand and gave her the death glare.

“Out, out! All of you!” Cat yelled, waving them all out, her face taking on the guise of someone who really wasn’t in the mood for games from her subordinates.

“But Miss Grant-“ Winn blurted out in his whiny, entitled way. Cat glared at him specifically and placed a firm finger aiming at the middle of his forehead.

“Do you want to keep your job?”

Winn understood that this wasn’t the time for bartering with his boss. He gulped and nodded his head quickly.

“Then get out, all of you. NOW!” Cat roared.

All three of them looked unenthusiastic, but ready to exit the scene, when Kara screeched out in agony.

“ARRRRAAGGGHHHH!!”

Cat raced over to her side, grabbing her flushed face in her small, delicate hands and looked into the younger girl’s eyes. Kara seemed to look back at her, but with only a small semblance of the sunny girl Cat came to know, and very secretly love. There was an immense amount of ache in those bluish-grey eyes, as if she were pleading for something, anything to help her get through it all. Cat couldn’t beat the expression down for a second longer, and traced the tips of her finger down the young woman’s hospital gown to inspect the damage. There was a huge gash running vertically down her long, lean torso. Cat inspected further, drawing her face close to the wound, when she saw just how deep it was. James made his way over and held Kara’s left hand.

“Kara, it’s ok, the doctor is going to be in very soon! It’s just really unfortunate that they had a lot of people coming in tonight,” James whispered, as Kara glanced over to him, tears streaming down her face. James shook his head, and kissed her hand, causing Cat to recoil ever so slightly. Kara managed to gather enough strength away from her pain to speak.

“Yes, I wouldn’t be here at all if that weren’t the case. I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save them! Any of them,” Kara spoke, through her veil of tears, her voice shaky, unsure, “the women…the children…” she continued, finally sinking into her former torment, screaming out in deliria. 

“Enough of this nonsense!” Cat yelled at them, “if you won’t leave us alone, then go get a fucking doctor, would you? Make yourselves useful for god’s sake!”

Lucy ran out of the room at this, while Winn simply turned his back to Kara and stared at the opposite wall. Cat ignored both of the men and placed her hand on Kara’s head, stroking her hair.

“What in God’s name did you do, Kiera? “ Cat asked, shaking her head and rolling her eyes to the window, “you can’t be everyone’s hero all the time, you silly girl.”

It was enough to have to choke back tears, and Cat took her hand from Kara’s head and placed it over her mouth, remaining to look out the window. James realized the seriousness of the situation when Kara opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out but a simple whimper in Cat’s favor. She attempted to reach a hand up to her cheek in order to comfort her, but James knew Cat would have none of this in her state, and checked the hand for himself.

“Kara, you can’t expend anymore energy. I’m going to go follow Lucy and try to get you the help you need,” he assured her, Kara managing to nod at him as he dashed out, dragging Winn along with him. Cat could hear the complaints of Winn as he was dragged along the corridor.

Cat had tried to concentrate on anything but the current situation. As commencing a cry wasn’t bad enough, she began to think about her past trauma. The lone tree outside the window rustled, as if to mimic the shaky anxiousness she was feeling deep inside her chest. She tried to breathe in and out slowly to keep her anxiety in check. 

That wasn’t working. That never worked.

She got up from Kara and began to pace around the room, wringing her hands together and taking simultaneous glances at both and the ceiling and the floor. Kara, through all her distress, lifted her head up ever so slightly in order to confirm her recognition of this behavior in Cat, except this time, she had never seen Cat so shaken, so worried, so confused, so much in dread as she was. The woman’s heels clanked on the floor relentlessly, and Kara could hardly bear the sound. She slammed her head back down onto the hard hospital pillow and her joints seized up once more.

“Please…Miss Grant…tell me…why you’re acting like this…it’s not like I’m going to die…” Kara spoke in between hard breaths, opening one eye to glance over at her boss, managing a weak, cheesy smile that sent Cat swimming. She marched right over to her bedside and grabbed both sides of her face, again, this time more gently. They stared into each other’s eyes; searching for answers to questions they had no idea how to form. Cat breathed out one last final sigh, looking down at the huge gash before speaking.

“Kara, this is a very serious situation. The wound looks like it’s been infected, and that’s a very, very serious thing, in case you weren’t quite aware,” Cat said in her snarky tone, but it only made Kara smile again. Partially because Cat actually pronounced her name right this time. “I don’t know how you can keep on smiling like that, on the verge of oblivion.”

Cat placed a hand to her forehead and felt that she was burning up. She looked back into the blue eyes of her assistant, and they began to glaze over just slightly. The young girl initiated a look that was almost loopy, and started immediately to shiver.

“I’m…cold…Miss Grant…”

Cat’s eyes widened at this and she looked around the room for anything that might warm her up. She knew that all of these symptoms were dangerous signs, and that the doctor better come marching through the door any minute. Across the room, she happened upon a spare, white knitted blanket, and after retrieving it, threw it over Kara and pulled up a chair to sit back down next to her. Cat’s gaze followed the window again, spotting the tree and at once shivering, herself. Kara was astute as ever.

“You…never did answer my question…” Kara spoke insipidly, searching again for Cat’s beautiful hazel eyes. Cat just shook her head while continuing her fixation on the tree, and squeezed Kara’s hand. 

“I can’t burden you with my stories. You need to get some rest. I don’t think you’re absorbing just how serious your condition is,” Cat snapped, trying to divert the attention away from herself. If there was one thing she hated more than seeing Kara ill, it was vulnerability. She pulled her hand away from Kara’s, much to the reluctance of the young girl, and crossed her arms, eyes travelling then to the floor. The curve of Cat’s intense cheekbone with the contrast of her still, stone jaw made Kara even more curious.

“Just tell me…Cat.”

It was the first time Kara had used her first name in front of her, and Cat looked up in shock. Her mouth hung open ever so slightly, and she shook her head, eyes blinking like they do so often. She felt all her defenses crumbling in the presence of that wall-wrecker of a girl. It took a bit of time for any words to come out, but eventually they made their way to the surface.

“It was…Carter.” Cat started, looking back into Kara’s eyes and down again at the floor. She kept notice of her own hands still wringing.

“When I had given birth to him, I had a most horrible experience. It hadn’t been my first, of course, but it was still a horribly frightening experience. For one, his father wasn’t there. Shocker.”

Kara listened intently. Cat paused, rolling her eyes back out the window and to the familiar tree rustling in the heavy winds.

“I had heard the doctors whispering all around me that the baby might not make it. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed myself into an absolute fit. The doctor, he gave me an epidural against my will and further sedated me in my rebellious riot. I could feel a fever creeping upon me as they lowered me down into a Cesarean. They placed a veil over the bottom half of my body so I couldn’t see anything. I just remember crying out in the worst way, tears blurring the little vision I had left, not really knowing whether or not I was ever going to see my son, or if he was even still alive.”

Cat stopped there. She was clearly not ready to go on with the rest. Kara pressed her further. 

It was Cat’s words. Just the sound of her pretty, high-pitched, honey-laden voice seemed to have this miraculous healing effect on her, as if it were the great Sun itself.

“Go on, I can hear this. I can hear about your pain, Miss Grant.”

Cat continued grudgingly at these words, beginning in a blush, “The pain was so bad Kara, I don’t understand how they could have messed it all up. It was as if they were getting revenge on me for being the country’s greatest journalist—or future greatest journalist,” Cat stated in her narcissistic way, which made Kara subtly roll her eyes. Cat scowled at her for a moment and continued.

“But no one was there for me. Not his father. Not my mother. Nobody. I had nobody. I had never felt more alone, and scared to death.”

Cat contemplated her words, her eyebrows knitting together slowly.

“And what an awful thing to have to put a young woman through…”

Her words trailed off as she was finally able to take another affectionate look at Kara, who had nothing but the utmost sympathy, and even love in her stare. Cat reached up again and touched her cheek, this time Kara finding her strength and placing her own hand over it, closing her eyes and relishing the moment, the feel of Cat’s gentle touch. She could sense an absolute love surging through her body, and it was symbolic of a well of power for Kara. In so many ways, Cat was indefinitely her kryptonite, but she was also her Tree of Life. Cat couldn’t help grinning like an idiot as the tears that were threatening to escape finally fell from her eyes.

“And that…” Cat managed through her sobs, “Is why I hate hospitals.”

Kara beamed back at her, and the two shared a tender moment right before a doctor, two nurses, and the gang came rushing in. The doctor immediately took notice of her vitals and understood the young girl’s dire condition. He looked at each and every CatCo employee.

“You all need to leave. This girl needs immediate medical treatment and if she doesn’t get antibiotics and stiches within minutes, she will die.”

Kara heard this just as she went under. 

She let up a start, looked at briefly, but worriedly at Cat, then slowly took Cat’s hands away from her face, and whispered, “Go,” before falling under. 

Not two seconds later, she began to flatline.

“What’s going on, what is this?” Cat blurted out, scrambling up from her position over Kara’s lifeless body, walking over the Kara’s heart monitor, taking in the straight green line and shrill, sharp beep associated with passing.

“This can’t be real, she’s not dead yet! What are you doing standing there?! DO SOMETHING YOU IDIOT!!” 

The cry for help took the doctor aback, but he insisted Cat leave because it was an emergency.

“It’s been an emergency for a half hour at least, you imbecile! And where were you when she needed you most? NOWHERE TO BE FOUND!”

Cat quickly transformed into a basket case. Security had to escort her out of the room while she struggled in a frenzy, screaming Kara’s name over and over. Luckily, there was a window open into the room, and Cat made her case to stay and press herself against it, witnessing the scene while Winn, James, and Lucy stood in the background, shaken.

Cat wouldn’t stop screaming out Kara’s name. She had never felt like this before about another person, so unhinged, so uninhibited, so out of control. She never let her feelings show. She never opened up. And this was exactly why. 

She watched them place the defibrillator over Kara’s chest and unsuccessfully bring her back to life, more than a few times. Cat could not remember the last time she had felt such emotional agony, such absolute heartbreak. She felt that she, too, might just die right then and there.

“Kara….Kara…” was al the energy she had left to whimper, and she sunk against the bottom of the hospital wall, not caring just how many germs she was attracting to her body at that moment. She sobbed uncontrollably on the floor for a good few minutes, before Lucy came over to comfort her. She placed a hand on her back.

“Miss Grant, look! They-

“Don’t touch me, you fool,” Cat spluttered, pushing Lucy’s unwanted hand away.

“No, seriously Miss Grant! They’re revived her and are now stitching her up!”

Cat’s eyes just about popped out of her head as Lucy helped her up off the floor, and she pressed her hands and face to the window and saw that they were indeed stitching the girl up. Only, they didn’t bother to put her under any anesthetic once they placed an IV of antibiotics in her, and she was screeching out in pain. Cat watched as the girl she loved twisted and struggled, two nurses holding her down and attempting to comfort her, a dark look coming over the young woman’s face that she had never seen before.

“These monsters,” Cat thought, as she tried forcefully to open the locked door to the room. She started banging on the door, shouting, “I’ll have your heads for this! Don’t you think that your unlawful and unethical practices will get beyond me, the Queen of All Media! JERKS!”

Cat kicked the door finally and gave up, looking around the hallway at the doctors and nurses staring at her. Once they saw that they noticed her, they quickly averted their gazes. Her lips tightened and she shook her head as she went over to lean against the wall next to Winn. Winn looked over cautiously at her and inched away, creating a space barrier between the two of them.

The four of them waited for hours in the waiting room while Kara recovered. It had been that Kara needed 20 stiches in her torso, and to be placed on oral antibiotics. James, Winn, and Lucy understood that she probably wouldn’t need them in a day or so, but they kept quiet about that around Cat. 

So everything went back to normal around the office, besides the fact that Cat was so sorely missing her sunny, optimistic assistant to brighten up her day. It had been raining non-stop since the incident, and it didn’t help Cat’s emotional state in the slightest. She could hardly believe she almost fired the girl so many times at this point—she realized that she could barely even function properly without her. And this was a very bad sign. Cat had let someone into her walls, and she had once again been hurt. And to top it all off, she had no idea when Kara would be back to work, to restore the peace and order around the dreary and dark office space.

Cat decided that she couldn’t wait for the girl to return. She once again phoned her driver, but this time for a very different cause. She trotted over to her private elevator and got in.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kara heard a knock on her apartment door. She was busy kneading dough when she heard the unwelcome and inauspicious noise, as she was not expecting any visitors. She looked outside her kitchen window and saw that it was raining pretty hard, and wondered who could possibly have braved the storm just to come see her. James, Winn, Lucy and Alex had already visited her many times since her accident, and this was her first day at home since after being stuck in the DEO for three days. Kara rinsed her hands in her kitchen sink and wiped them on her apron, yelling that she would be right at the door. She pranced, bouncing over to the door, and opened it with her usual, luminous smile. The smile disappeared when she saw who it was.

“CAT?” Kara exclaimed in shock, taking in the sight of a dripping wet Cat Grant in her Prada heels and heavily patterned Gucci blouse. Kara suspected that these articles might be ruined from the rain and soot, but Cat was smiling ever so slightly, holding up a potted plant for Kara to see, which was also a bit worn down from the storm, and had a rather sad, dejected look about it.

“What…what is this Miss Grant? Shouldn’t you be at the office working on the hospital story?” Kara asked, shifting her feet together in a crossed, defensive stance. It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy to see Cat—in fact, she was quite overjoyed. She just really didn’t want her boss to see how much better she was, when she could have in fact returned to work that day.

In all honesty, Kara was a little embarrassed about everything that took place at the hospital. The gentle touches, the stolen glances, the gazing into each others’ eyes, Cat’s very personal story...Kara just felt like she didn’t live up to any of it. That she didn’t deserve it. Kara lifted up her shirt and showed Cat her scars.

“20 stiches,” Kara started, and watched Cat’s eyes trace the wounds on her slim torso as if it were her own hands, “and it’s actually more painful than I’m making it out to be.”

After the initial bit of shock and refusal to look at her handsome, chiseled body any further, Cat resumed smiling, and offered up the plant to her young, bright assistant. She answered Kara’s questioning gaze.

“It’s a small oak tree. So you can plant it in your yard when you feel up to it. It’s the same kind of tree I had spotted outside both hospital windows…when I was in a lot of pain. They give me comfort. They remind me of the cyclical nature of life.”

Cat proceeded to shove the potted tree in Kara’s hands, Kara taking an unbalanced step back in shock.

“Wow, I had no idea you were so philosophical, Miss Grant!”

Cat rolled her eyes in her signature fashion and waved her hands about in the air.

“Oh, just take the damn plant and don’t forget to water it until you can place it outside where it belongs,” Cat said, turning to go. She strutted halfway down the hall when Kara shouted after her.

“Wait, Miss Grant!”

Cat paused in her spot and turned hallway around with a sly, bothered expression on her cool countenance. Kara fidgeted with her glasses.

“Uh, well, since you’re already away from the office, maybe you’d like to say for some afternoon tea? I’m baking some bread and I’ve already made some red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing…I mean, if you’re not watching your figure too closely.”

Kara pressed her lips together in the hopes that Cat wouldn’t say no. Cat looked at her with suspicious eyes, and then seemed to soften her appearance, shrugging and hip-swaying back over to where Kara stood in her doorway.

“Well, if you are offering some afternoon tea, and I suppose I simply can’t resist some fresh baked bread.” She shoved her drenched bag into Kara’s free hand. “Also, who knew my ingenue of an assistant could bake?”

Kara smirked and moved out of the way, allowing her to move into the apartment from the doorway.

“After you, Miss Grant,” Kara insisted, and she shut the door behind them. Once in, Cat turned around to face Kara, smiling once more.

“I’m just glad that you’re okay.”

They two women spent another minute grinning and staring into each others’ eyes, once again, before chatting the afternoon away over tea, freshly baked bread and red velvet cupcakes.

**Author's Note:**

> Ending note: Ok, so this is my first fic attempt in years. I hope it wasn’t too OOC and that you enjoyed it.


End file.
